Its pretty clear, if you look at the results, the country - as a whole - wants a broad left right coalition. (with the proviso of no tories in scotland) How about we vote for roles in government and not parties?
So given what people voted for this time round and what they considered important. I think the next coalition cabinet should (would) look like this
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury , Minister for the Civil Service (Tory)
Deputy PM (Labour - Who?)
Chancelor (Tory - who)
Home Office (who UKIP?)
Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (who)
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (who?)
Secretary of State for Defence (who? UKIP?)
Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade (tory)
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (tory)
Secretary of State for Health (Labour)
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, (who?)
Secretary of State for Education, Minister for Women and Equalities (who Tory?)
Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (greens clearly)
Secretary of State for Transport (not greens clearly)
Secretary of State for Scotland (guess who!!!!!!!!)
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (not Gerry Adams)
Secretary of State for Wales (Sean the sheep)
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (who)
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (greens clearly)
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 8 May 15 at 10:24
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>> Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
A relatively non partisan lawyer. The LC's place in the constitution is too important to be ordinary politics.
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I think the Labour Party should be led from the Upper House by Lord Gordon Brown - the best brain on the Left since Atlee, Bevan, Bevin and then Wilson.
If he isn't snapped up quickly he'll be off to lead the World Bank, the IMF or somesuch.
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I hope that was TIC Mike H. Actually living here while he was in power may have changed your opinion of him.
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His track record on the economy was good, and unchallenged by the opposition, until the forces of incompetence (international financiers and other swindlers) blew it off course.
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Between 2001 and 2007 public spending increased by 54%. A lot of that money was simply P'd up against the wall, for example Tax Credits (In general something I agree with) were awarded to people earning up to 66k per year, subsidising cars, better houses and holidays for those already doing quite nicely, thank you.
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Majority of public spending in the period went to the NHS. Still lower as a % of GDP than other G7 economies.
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...earning up to 66k per year, subsidising cars, better houses and holidays for those already doing quite nicely, thank you.
Source please, RR. This wouldn't be a single extreme case spun up to look like the norm by the rightwing press, would it?
I was both a net recipient and (for longer) a net funder of Child Tax Credit. It seemed like a fuse and well thought out scheme to me, provided you could cope with the application. PFI on the other hand...
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Never got tax credits. I was always surprised we got child benefit. Didn't seem to be that sensible, I wonder why it isn't means tested.
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To help encourage those with means not to leave all the breeding to those without?
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With all due respect, £100 isn't going to encourage me to cross the road if I don't feel like it, never mind affecting the amount of breeding I'm likely to do.
Yet there have been times in my life when £100 would have been almost life changing.
Benefits should be targetted toward those who will get the most "benefit" from them.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 8 May 15 at 22:37
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£2400/yr tax-free for 3 children is not an insubstantial amount of money.
It used to be Family Allowance I seem to recall - change the name and it's easier to remove.
Personally I'd take Child Benefit and the various in-work tax credits and rework them into reducing employer NI while increasing minimum wage substantially.
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>>Personally I'd take Child Benefit and the various in-work tax credits and rework them into
>>reducing employer NI while increasing minimum wage substantially
The trouble with minimum wage is that it hurts small business disproportionately.
We need some kind of system where we set "company" minimum wage according to the size (revenue, T/O, no. of employees or similar) of the company you work for. But then you should be able to claim the difference between that minimum wage and the "country" minimum wage, if you see what I mean.
And then the Government could decide how they were going to distribute that cost back, perhaps utilizing employer NI contributions.
It'd take thinking about to avoid employers, or employees, playing games. But it ought to be possible.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 8 May 15 at 22:58
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>>>>
>> Personally I'd take Child Benefit and the various in-work tax credits and rework them into
>> reducing employer NI while increasing minimum wage substantially.
>>
>>
>>
The problem with doing away with in work benefits such as Tax Credits and raising the minimum wage to compensate is that it wouldn't help a substantial proportion of those who need them - the self employed.
And many small businesses such as the thousands of corner shops around the country would not be able to afford to employ staff at all, something the Greens don't seem to understand with their £10 an hour target.
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And many small businesses such as the thousands of corner shops around the country would
>> not be able to afford to employ staff at all, something the Greens don't seem
>> to understand with their £10 an hour target.
>>
Many said similar when the minimum wage came in.
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>> And many small businesses such as the thousands of corner shops around the country
>> would
>> >> not be able to afford to employ staff at all, something the Greens don't
>> seem
>> >> to understand with their £10 an hour target.
>> >>
>>
>> Many said similar when the minimum wage came in.
Which is why zero hours contracts appeared.
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>> Which is why zero hours contracts appeared.
Zero hours contracts were around long before the minimum wage.
First I heard of them was in late eighties when a review of DSS work in London suggested farming it out to staff in depressed areas and on zero hour contracts.
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I think zero hour contracts were more of a reaction to the clamp down on temporary and casual labour.
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"Which is why zero hours contracts appeared."
There's little difference between 'zero hour contracts' and being self-employed, is there? That's kind of how my consultancy work pans out, and my son's freelance videography work.
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>> There's little difference between 'zero hour contracts' and being self-employed, is there? That's kind of
>> how my consultancy work pans out, and my son's freelance videography work.
The power/choice thing is a bit different though. If you're properly self employed then you're likely to work for multiple clients and, subject to keeping wolf from door, a choice of which work to accept/reject.
While some zero hours is 'flexible' work of the sort that appeals to students or the retired at the more extreme end it's quite exploitative. The employer may provide no shifts or many but demand you be at beck/call for long periods of time in a contract that doesn't allow the employee to work for other employers too.
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>> Never got tax credits. I was always surprised we got child benefit. Didn't seem to
>> be that sensible, I wonder why it isn't means tested.
Because historically it subsumed the former tax allowances for children with Family Allowance into a single benefit payable to the mother. Means testing in a way which is fair is both complex and costly which is why the crude and unfair limit based on higher rate tax was so controversial.
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...It seemed like a fuse and well thought out scheme...
Eh? How did that get in? Fair. That's what I meant.
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>>>>
>> Source please, RR. This wouldn't be a single extreme case spun up to look like
>> the norm by the rightwing press, would it?
>>
>>
>>
Under Labour people in certain circumstances could claim Child Tax Credits while their income was 66k. The Coalition reduced that figure to 50k (Still too high).
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>> Under Labour people in certain circumstances could claim Child Tax Credits while their income was
>> 66k. The Coalition reduced that figure to 50k (Still too high).
It was always a stupid concept to be paid child tax credits yet still be in a higher tax bracket.
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>> the forces of incompetence (international financiers and other swindlers)
Or 'the powers that be'...
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Following Balls' (well balanced) speech after the count, BBC's Nick Robinson claimed that Balls was the best economic brain he knew ????
This the man who recently bounced two personal cheques, and, presumably encouraged Brown to sell off gold at a historically low point, destroy the finance of the NHS with ponzi-like PFI contracts (which are still, IMO, the current source of the NHS financial problems), and commit us to immense borrowing at a time of the international financial meltdown. Maybe Robinson should get out more.
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As regards Clegg's resignation, I can't see any reason that he needed to - who are they going to choose in his place? The whole party signed up to the coalition, and carried the can for what, in effect, they did - moderate the Tory's wishes.
I must say that that was not my preference, but it happened'
.
I think that Clegg had had enough anyway, and was always going to retire from the leadership.
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"The whole party signed up to the coalition, and carried the can for what, in effect, they did - moderate the Tory's wishes."
Agreed, though you can argue long and hard about whether the LibDems are in fact more left of centre than right and thus whether they were ever spiritually at home in the Tory camp. Some members resented it.
I think Clegg is a basically decent bloke. History will undoubtedly be much kinder to him than the electorate were on Thursday. The broken promise over student tuition fees was a major factor.
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>> This the man who recently bounced two personal cheques, and, presumably encouraged Brown to sell
>> off gold at a historically low point,
The historical low point at which it had bumped along since well before the end of the cold war?
It made perfectly good sense at the time to convert it to more appropriate assets. The price only picked up in he aftermath of 9/11, and event no more foreseeable by crystal balls than by Ed Balls.
And on the immense borrowing point it would be fascinating to see what would have happened in same circs if the Tories had won in 2005.
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Whilst listening to the post election wash up I heard quite poignant statement regarding the differences between two parties. I think it was Cons v Labour. It went something along the lines of:
" They are about the creation of wealth not the distribution of wealth"
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Anthony Charles Lynton Blair created a lot of wealth - for himself, and he's still got it.
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>>An MP's victoryspeech that proved popular with the audience
>>www.thejournal.ie/stewart-jackson-election-speech-2093721-May2015/
We need more like him - in UKIP.
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Don't the both go together? Wealth what is created should be distributed.Not everybody can run or want to become a business man or women.
I think the election had a lot more to do with the personalities.Cameron started slow and got more passionate towards the end of the campaign.If that makes sense.
When Milliband got the stone slab out with the silly words wrote on it that was it..I said to my missus Labour are never going to win this election.
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>> When Milliband got the stone slab out with the silly words wrote on it that
>> was it..I said to my missus Labour are never going to win this election.
As did every normal person. Makes you wonder who was stupid enough to come up with that lame brained idea.
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>>Makes you wonder who was stupid enough to come up with that lame brained idea.
YHW I believe.
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>> >> Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
>>
>> A relatively non partisan lawyer. The LC's place in the constitution is too important to
>> be ordinary politics.
Well Brompy, you will be delighted to see that nice fellow The Right Hon Michael Gove has been appointed Lord Chancelor & Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Justice.
Clearly revenge for plebgate and has been given the brief to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights.
Had I been Cameron I would have kept him as chief whip, so all the bile in the tory party would be directed at him and not my cabinet.
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 10 May 15 at 16:34
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Gove seems unlikeable to me but he was very sound on education: he thought it should be provided, not subverted and called 'elitist'. That 'elitist' Scheiss is not restricted to brainless lefties either.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 12 May 15 at 15:57
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>> Gove seems unlikeable to me but he was very sound on education: he thought it
>> should be provided, not subverted and called 'elitist'. That 'elitist' Scheiss is not restricted to
>> brainless lefties either.
You what? Have you taken leave of your senses?
Gove was the most divisive controlling centrist micro manager to inhabit the Education ministry in generations. And in a strong field too 'cos Labour's appointments were, Alan Johnson and Estelle Morris excepted, in much the same mould.
The party supposedly in favour of localism actually oversaw, or rather engineered a move to the centre in education in a way that would have had the press 'watchdogs' howling from the roof tops if Labour had tried it. Commissioners appointed by Whitehall carrying out the functions of every Local Education Authority. Civil Servants at the most junior level being supposed acting as Champions and mentors for schools wishing to convert to academies. Bribing them with money that's dissapearing now Whitehall has control.
The Minister prescribing the books studied at each key stage for English and History.
A fair few spending scandals involving academies have already hit the public domain. They're the tip of a corrupt iceberg.
Is he now going to let anyone with commitment and possible premises but no experience set up 'free jails' or 'free courts' wherever they wish? Remove any elements of local control so the whole shooting match is micro managed from 102 Petty France?
I need to go and lie down......
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Tue 12 May 15 at 16:15
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>> I need to go and lie down......
Wow, sorry Bromptonaut!
It's true I'd forgotten about academies which were a very rubbish idea. Ministers do have this tendency to tinker stupidly with things just to show that they are on top of them.
Spending and money scandals happen under all governments though.
What I really meant was that Gove appeared to favour proper subjects properly taught in the way they were when I were a nipper. Even some comprehensives, which were all after my time, were OK on that score.
However it's true that others were far from OK. Why anyone imagined it would be 'progressive' to install a sort of education super-lite is completely beyond me. Nevertheless as the sixties and seventies advanced that was what happened, and the effects are still with us.
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The next coalition. - Bromptonaut
